Windows Azure To be Rebranded as Microsoft Azure

Today we are announcing that Windows Azure will be renamed to Microsoft Azure, beginning April 3, 2014. This change reflects Microsoft’s strategy and focus on Azure as the public cloud platform for customers as well as for our own services Office 365, Dynamics CRM, Bing, OneDrive, Skype, and Xbox Live.

Our commitment to deliver an enterprise-grade cloud platform for the world’s applications is greater than ever. Today we support one of the broadest set of operating systems, languages, and services of any public cloud—from Windows, SQL and .NET to Python, Ruby, Node.js, Java, Hadoop, Linux, and Oracle. In today’s mobile-first, cloud-first, data-powered world, customers want a public cloud platform that supports their needs—whatever they may be—and that public cloud is Microsoft Azure.

The rebranding makes sense, since Windows Azure isn’t really all about Windows. You can run Linuxes as VM on Azure, as well as many other non-Windows-Specific development tools, such as Java, Ruby, PHP, and Paython.

Will Windows 8 be the next rebranding “victim”? I don’t really think so. After all, Windows 8, or upcoming 9, is still about Windows.